Thursday, June 04, 2009

As Israel Prepares Laws to Deepen its Discrimination, the World Must hold Israeli Racism to Account

As Israel Prepares Laws to Deepen its Discrimination, the World Musthold Israeli Racism to Account

4 June 2009, Bethlehem, Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residencyand Refugee Rights - For decades Israel has practiced discrimination andforced displacement against its Palestinian citizenry with impunity. Butnow it seeks to impose consent for its crimes upon its Palestinian victims.

Three bills currently making rounds in the Israeli Knesset reveal anobscene and dangerous targeting of the individual and collective rightsof Palestinian citizens.

One bill seeks to prohibit marking the day Israel declared itsindependence as a day of mourning. A second prohibits negating theexistence of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. The third requiresIsraeli citizens to sign oaths of loyalty to the state, its flag andnational anthem, and to perform military or civil service. Though stillat an early stage, if the bills pass, violators could face harshsentences including imprisonment and revocation of citizenship.

Palestinian citizens of Israel are part of the indigenous inhabitants ofPalestine who were made a minority in their homeland through theexpulsion of two thirds of their people in 1948 by Zionist militiasduring Israel's establishment – events Palestinians commemorate as theNakba (Arabic for Catastrophe.)

Their leaders have likened the potential approval of the bills to adeclaration of war. The bills "require the Arab minority to deny itshistory and Arab-Palestinian identity on one hand and to identify withZionist values that negate its national identity on the other," in thewords of Mohammed Zeidan, head of the Higher Arab Follow-Up Committee,an informal collective leadership body of Palestinian citizens.

Attempts to force compliance with the Zionist narrative, character andpractice of the state is equivalent to demanding that Palestinianssanction their own historical dispossession while rubber stamping theircontemporary second-class citizenship as "non-Jews" in the Jewish state.

Moreover these attempts come in the context of an escalating campaignagainst this community that seeks to paint it as a "demographic timebomb" and a "fifth column." Yuval Diskin, Director of the GeneralSecurity Service has described Palestinian citizens' demands forequality as constituting "a strategic danger to the state", that must bethwarted "even if their activity is conducted through democratic means”;Israeli politicians and "peace proposals" speak openly of "populationexchanges" between Palestinian citizens and Israeli settlers in the WestBank; and the Hebrew press has even made recent revelations that theIsraeli army is engaged in training special units to occupy Palestiniantowns and villages inside Israel in the event of a regional war, toprevent protests and access to highways.

A broader campaign of incitement is at play here. These laws aim topolarize the situation between Jewish and Palestinian citizens, whilejustifying the quashing of legitimate Palestinian demands. Israel alsoappears intent to extend elements of its military practices againstPalestinians in the OPT to those who are its citizens.

Given Israel's historical record of repeatedly dispossessingPalestinians – be it beneath the 'fog of war' or through incrementalbureaucratic means - the initiation of these laws can only be seen asstrengthening Israel's de jure policies of apartheid to compliment itsde facto apartheid practices on both sides of the Green Line.

In this context, instead of trying to engage the new Israeli government,it is time for the world to boycott, divest and sanction the Israeliregime until it abandons all racist policies and practices andimplements international law.